AN ORATION 



ON 



M\mm 



mm 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



PHILOMATHI AN SOCIETY 



OF 



%m\ Iflint mnf Cnllegf, m, 



u. c 



JUNE 29th, 1853 



BY O. A. BROWNSON, L. L. D. 



; BALTIMORE: 

PRINTED BY HEDIAN & O'BRIEN, 

j 82 BALTIMORE STREET 

) MDCCCLIII. 



AN ORATION 



ON 






DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



PHILOMATHIAN SOCIETY, 



OF 



3}kimi Iflint Wanf Mt^, ®t, 



zL^L 



JUNE 29tli, 1853. 




4/' 



^;., 



BY O. A. BROWNSON, L. L. D. 



5 BALTIMORE: 

PRINTED BY HEDIAN & O'BRIEN, 

82 BALTIMORE STREET; 



MDCCCLIII. 



) /■' 



/^^3 



i«"7 



/ ^ S 3 



C 



opy ^ 





6 



\ 



PHILOMATHIAN HALL, 

June 29th, 1853 



.L,^ 



Dear Sir: — 

The Philomathian Society, of Mt. St. Mary's College presents throug-h us, 
its grateful acknowledgement for the pleasure derived from your able and eloquent 
address of this morning, and respectfully solicits a copy for publication. 
With sentiments of highest regard. 

Your obedient servants, 

L. T. CHATARD, ^ 
J. F. KNIGHT, I 
S. M. CHATARD, ' 
JNO. F. LAFARGE, r" C»"»«^^«ee. 

GEO. S. HEBB, 
THOS. BOUDAR. J 
0. A. Brownson, Esq.. 



Boston, July 19, 13.53. 

Gentlemen : — 

In compliance with your flattering request, I place a copy of my Oration at 
your disposal, to publish or not, as you may judge proper. 
I have the honor to be, gentlemen. 

Your most obedient servant, 

O. A. BROWNSON. 
L. T. Chatard, J. F. Knight, S. M. Chatard, &c.. Committee. 



ORATION. 



Gentlemen : 

I thank you very sincerely for the honor of being 
selected as your orator on this most interesting anniversary 
to you and your personal friends. It is always an honor to 
be called upon to address those who are preparing them- 
selves in academic halls, or having completed their academic 
course, are bidding adieu to the quiet and peaceful scenes of 
college life, and taking their leave of beloved classmates and 
venerated professors, to go forth and bear an active and 
honorable part in the multifarious affairs of this work-day 
world ; but it is more especially so to be invited to address' 
a Uterary society connected with this venerable colleo-e of 
Mount St. Mary, already so rich in classic associations, so 
hallowed by the memory of saintly virtues, and so dear tD 
every American Catholic heart for the eminent servants of 
the Church of God it has nurtured. 

Although I may repeat several things which 1 ventured to 
advance in this hall some five years since, I have thought 
that I could not better respond to the confidence which calls 
me here, than by inviting my young friends to follow me in 
some remarks on Liberal Studies in Relation to the 
Wants of a Free State. I shall have thus the advan- 



6 

tage of treating a subject to which your minds must have 
often been turned during your collegiate course, find of con- 
necting what has been your occupation as students with 
what are to be your practical duties as American citizens. 

Liberal studies, as the name itself implies, whether etymo- 
logically or historically considered, are those studies or 
those arts which are proper for the free as distinguished from 
the menial or servile classes of society, or, in more modern 
language, tiie nobility as distinguished from the people, gen- 
tlemen as distinguished from simplemen. Originally noble- 
man meant nothing more nor less than freeman, and in 
Hungary to-day all freemen are noble. 

The distinction of society into two classes, the one free, 
the other servile, the one noble and the other low, or the one 
gentle and the other simple — is older than profane history, 
and in one form and under one name or another has always 
existed ; and, as long as human nature remains what it is, 
probably will continue to exist. Perfect equality of ranks 
and conditions is never found, is never to be expected, and 
is, indeed, incompatible with the very idea of society itself. 
The distinction, whether a good or an evil, is a fact in all 
society, and in vain do we seek by political constitutions, 
social arrangements, and legislative enactments to obliterate 
or disguise it. It exists and re-appears at every step under 
all forms of civil polity and social organization, — in demo- 
cratic America no less than in aristocratic England, feudal 
Germany, monarchical France, and despotic Turkey; in the 
so-called Free States of the North no less than in the Slave 
States of the South. The entire universe, having its proto- 
type in the Eternal Nature of God, in the ever-blessed 
Trinity, Unity in essence and distinction in persons, is hier- 
archically organized and governed, and save in the sense of 
justice between man and man, and man and society, equality 
is an idle dream, an empty word, — nay, an impious word, fit 
only to be inscribed on the blood-red banner of the atheisti- 



cal Revolutionist. Whoso seeks to reduce all men to the 
same level, whether by levelling downwards or by levelling 
upwards, wars against God and Nature. Diversities of 
ranks and conditions are in the order of Divine Providence, 
and obtain even in Heaven, where there are many mansions, 
and where the Saints differ from each other as one star dif- 
fers from another in glory. Society without them is incon- 
ceivable, and were undesirable. It would be as dull and as 
monotonous as the boundless sandy plain diversified by no 
variety of hill and dale, mountain and valley, land and 
water — where the flocks and herds find no pasture, the bird 
no grove or bush from which to carol, and man no habita- 
tion. It would lose all its charms, all its variety, all its ac- 
tivity, and become stagnant and putrid as the ocean when 
the long calm sleeps oh its bosom. 

" Order is Heaven's first law, and this confest, 
Sonae are, and must be, greater than the rest." 

You of the South consist of freemen and slaves, of ^entle 
and simple, and so do we of the North. In both sections 
we find at bottom the same distinction of classes, though 
while you have the manliness to avow it, we have the art to 
disguise it from the careless observer, under the drapery of 
fine names. You call your slaves by their proper name, and 
while you impose upon them the duties of slaves, you reheve 
them from the cares and burdens of freemen ; we call our 
slaves freemen, and impose on them the labors and burdens 
of slavery, while we secure to them none of the advantages 
of freedom. The only advantage we can claim over you is, 
that our slaves being of the same race and color with our 
freemen, are individually less hopelessly slaves than yours. 
The class is as permanent with us as with you ; but individ- 
uals of the class may more easily escape from it, and rise in 
their own persons or in their children to the class of free- 
men. But on the other hand, if our slaves are under cer- 
tain aspects less slaves than yours, our freemen are less free 



than yours. The Southern gentleman has a personal free- 
dom and independence, which we rarely find in the North- 
ern gentleman, and which give to Southern manners a charm, 
a freshness, an ease, and a grace, which our Northern man- 
ners, I am sorry to say, for the most part lack. 

It is of no use to war against this inevitable distinction. 
To attempt either with you or with us, to obliterate it and 
make all freemen can result only in the destruclion of free- 
dom and the redaction of all to slavery; as the attempt to 
make all ge'ntlemen can end only in leaving no gentlemen, 
and in reducing all to simplemen, with low and vulgar tastes, 
habits, and manners. It is then our duty to accept the dis- 
tinction of classes as a social fact, permanent and indestruct- 
ible in civilized society, and conform to it in all our political 
and social arrangements. 

The strength and glory of a nation depend not on the 
vulgar, the commonalty, the low born, the servile, or the 
simple, but on its freemen, its gentlemen, its nobility. It is 
one of the saddest as well as one of the silliest mistakes of 
our age, that the few may be safely overlooked, and for all 
that is great and good, wise and just in the action of the state 
or of society, reliance must be placed on the many, on the 
masses so-called. But a nation is wis j and great, good and 
just, orily III its fi'eeiiiei), its iioblcniCD; and a great nation 
without i\i)l,'.,:i.:. or nci.tic ineii. lillud or uiitilled, is an unheard 
oi ui.o:]:..;; Vi/U I V:\ ic:] iiic there is i;^> ^<-'-y i^ithout 
i.i-iv;;u ;- :..'. .^i^: bi,t 'i. i.rt iij tvti^ lesy an armv witiiovit a 
ijvi;i:j'ul. ii ,t; U:;j iiiun, .Boiiupuriu was accustomed to say, 
not the iwcii that is the pnncipal thing. Gi\l- u^j tJK- man 
qualified to orr^cnize aiid cotnn:and an army, and an army 
ho will rarely h^.ck. hio will imd everywhere the materials 
needed. i\li troops are brave under brave and competent 
officers, and no matter how brave the men may naturally be, 
they will be cowards in action if their officers are incompe- 
tent or white iivered. A s long as the gentry and nobility of 



9 

a country retain their integrity, are high-minded, patriotic 
and virtuous, really deserving the name of generosi^ it stands 
firm, and has in itself the recuperative energy speedily to re- 
c over from any reverses it may for a moment experience ; 
but let these fail, or let them become corrupt, base and sel- 
fish in their principles and feelings, real churls in their char- 
acter, and you may see the hand v^^riting on the wall record- 
ing its doom. Its days are numbered ; it is weighed in the 
balance and found wanting ; and it must speedily fall to rise 
no more forever. 

I tell you only what you must have read in the histories 
you have studied. When flourished ancient Athens ? Was 
it not when her Eupatrids were really free and noble ; when 
they retained the virtues of the olden times, and were chiv- 
alric, generous, brave, and patriotic ? Was it the arms of 
all-conquering Rome that prostrated her in the dust, and 
left her wallowing for long ages in the mire ? Why gained 
he Roman a victory which the Persian with far greater fjr- 
ces foiled to win ? Because Athens had not men ; because 
her population had dwindled, or her wealth been exhausted? 
By no means. But because she had no Miltiades, no Aris- 
tides, no Themistocles. Her Eupatrids had lost their no- 
bility, had ceased to be freemen, and the poor people, brave 
even to daring, were beaten for the lack of brave and compe- 
tent leaders. Had the brave old tyrant of the Chersonesus 
commanded, as at Marathon, the Roman ^Emilianus had 
perhaps shared the fate of the Persian Datis. The decline 
of Rome dates from the corruption of her nobles, and she 
fell when they had lost all vestiges of the old Roman 
virtues. 

At the time when the Barbarians began to cross the Rhine 
and invade the Gallic provinces of the Empire, those provin- 
ces were as rich and as populous as m.odern France, and per- 
haps even more so ; and yet what more contemptible than 
the resistance they offered ! Indeed, they seem to have 



10 

offered no resistance at all. In reading their history, it 
seems as if with the Imperial armies the whole population 
disappeared, and the invaders took possession of a country 
without inhabitants. Yet the Romano-Gallic people re- 
mained on the soil, and in numbers of a hundred, if not of a 
thousand, to one of the conquerors. France under Charles 
le Chauve was populous, wealthy, cultivated, and possessed 
of vast resources both for defence and conquest, as Charle- 
magn had proved, and yet a handful of ISorse pirates were 
able to ravage her coast with impunity, to Sciil-up her rivers 
into the interior, to sack even the city of Paris, to plunder 
her sacred shrines, churches, and monasteries, massacre or 
enslave her priests and religious, and to threaten the con- 
quest of the whole kingdom, with no resistance \^orth men- 
tioning but from the dead, and their ravages were interrupt- 
ed only by the conversion to Christianity of their famous 
Chief Rollo. Why was this? Because her people were 
cowards, and could not be induced to fight in their own de- 
fence ? We all know better, in all ages, and under all 
dynasties, the French people have been brave and warlike, 
none more so. It was not the men, but the man that failed 
not the people, but their ( hiefs. Her noblemen, her gen- 
try, lacked the virtues of their order, had become selfish 
and mccin, land were chiefly engaged in plundering the 
Church and one another. The moment a man appears, the 
Great Hugh Capet, founder of the third dynasty of French 
kings, or rather of the line of French as istiiig uished from 
Frankish monarchs, the whole face of things is changed, 
and the kingdom from being unable to defend itself against 
the petty expeditions of the Norsemen, suddenly rises to the 
rank of the first power of Europe, Why again hes Ireland 
prostrate for ages with the armed heel of the Anglo-Saxon 
on her neck ? Because her people fail ? Because she 
wants men? The armies of England, France, Austria, and 
Spain have long since proved the contrary. No people are 



11 

shrewder, more intellectual, moral, religious, braver, or more 
capable of endurance But it is her nobility, her gentry that 
fail through corruption, venality, or want of national char- 
acter. She has no chiefs Give her a man who would be 
to her what Wellington might have been, what he was to 
all countries but his own, or a nobility and gentry as truly 
Irish, as the nobility and gentry of England are English, and 
she would instantly throw off her foreign oppressor, and 
rise to a high and commanding position among the free na- 
tions of the world. But what can she do without a man, 
without chiefs, or when those who should be her nobles and 
her gentlemen are each for himself, without patriotism, 
without virtue, capable of being bought by a paltry office 
whenever the British Ministry regard them as worth 
buying? 

All history, if you know how to read it, proves that it is 
the nobility, or the gentlemen, that make the nation, and 
determine its rank and character among the nations of the 
earth, never the people as detached or distinguised from 
them. I speak not against the people ; I have, perhaps, 
more genuine love and respect for them than have the wordy 
demagogues who make it their business to flatter and cajole 
them, that they may use them ; but I tell you, young gentle- 
men, however democratically inclined you may be, that God 
gives to every nation an aristocracy, titled or untitled, re- 
cognized or unrecognized by the civil constitution, heredi- 
tary or unhereditary, whose mission it is to guide and lead 
the people, and to direct, sustain, and defend their interests. 
When these, by faction, by sloth, by luxury, or venality are 
deprived of their nobility and strength, or when through the 
neglect or abuse of their powers they have no longer the 
capacity or the disposition to discharge the proper duties of 
their state, the glory of the nation has departed, its days, as 
I have said, are numbered, and its people are as sheep with- 
out a shepherd. As long as a nation is really a living na- 



12 

tion, as long as it has a future, and a part to play in the 
great drama of nations, it has and must have its generosi, its 
nobility, its aristocracy, who, although the smaller part, 
must always be regarded as its pars sanior, and act as its 
chiefs and counsellors. When these are true and loyal, 
your nation prospers ; when they become base and corrupt, 
or when they lose the manners, sentiments and virtues of 
their order, and adopt those of the people, there is, save in 
God's gracious providence, no longer any hope for the na- 
tion. It is on the brink of the precipice, rushing headlong 
into the abyss of barbarianism that yawns below. Ask the 
Oriental States of antiquity, where the nobles lost their 
nobility, not as they are now losing it by the despotism of 
the people, but by the despotism of the monarch, who suf- 
fered no head but his own to rise above the universal level, 
if it is not so. Ask ancient Assyria and Egypt, Tyre and 
Carthage, if it is not so. Let the recently disinterred re- 
mains of Nineve, the mummies brought hither from the cat- 
ecombs of Thebes, the degraded Moslemin groping amid the 
fallen colonades and broken capitals of Balbec and Palmyra, 
the poor fisherman drying his nets on the site of ancient 
Tyre, where once her merchant princes did congregate, 
or the wild Curd robbing the defenceless traveller, over the 
graves of forgotten nations read you your ansewer, and 
teach you better than to listen for one moment to the insane 
dreams of modern demagogues and radicals, who would per- 
suade you that the strength and glory of a nation are in the 
ignorance, selfishness, and vulgarity of the many, not in the 
science, the wisdom, the disinterestedness, the chivalry, the 
heroism of the few, — the nobility and gentry, by whatever 
name you choose to call them. The wise man weighs votes, 
he does not count them. He seeks the approbation of the 
few, not of the multitude, who, as Pope John the XXII. 
says, are always wrong. Quicquid laudat, vituperio dignum 
est; quicquid cogitate vanum ; quicquid loquitur, f ahum ; 



13 

quicquid improhat, honum ; quicquid extollit, infame est. 
And the most discouraging thing in our beloved country, for 
I trust that whatever her faults, we all love her, and should 
were those faults a thousand times greater, is the tendency 
to place the servant above the master, and the rapid decline 
of the better class, the disappearance of our gentlemen from 
high official station^ and the entrusting of all affairs to the 
management of men who want nobility, elevation, and man- 
liness of character. 

The prejudice against aristocracy arises from the very 
common error that if there is an aristocracy it must exist 
for itself, and that the people must be held to exist for the 
aristocracy, not the aristocracy for the people. I have as 
little sympathy as any of my democratic countrymen, with 
the doctrine which teaches that the many are made to be 
"hewers of wood and drawers of water" to the few. I am 
a christian, not a pagan, and I hold all men to be of one 
blood, and to have the common rights of humanity, and one 
man has and can have no dominion in another, except in 
consideration of services rendered. I say not with our abo- 
litionists that man can have no property in man, but I do 
say, ofter the Supreme Pontiff Alexander the Third, that all 
men by the law of nature are free. I do not deny the right 
of the Southern master to the services of his slave; but I do 
deny that he derives that right from the municipal law 
which recognizes and defends it. As between him and his 
slave the master's right is founded, and can be founded, only 
on the benefits he confers on the slave, and the measure of 
these benefits is the measure of the services he has the right 
to exact in return. The slave, no matter what his color or 
his race, is a man, a human being, with all the natural rights 
of his master. He has i\\Q,jus dominii of himself as fully as 
any other man has of himself I must go against common 
sense, and the spirit of all Catholic teachings, to deny this. 
But the master has a claim upon him for the services he ren- 



14 

ders him. He protects and nurses him during his infancy, 
feeds and clothes him during life, and takes care of him in 
sickness and old age. This may not be, and probably is 
not, ordinarily as much as the services of the slave are v^orth 
to the master; but it is more than the labor of the slave, upon 
a general average, would be worth to himself, if obliged -to 
take the sole care of himself Take the class of slaves, and 
suppose the masters take proper care of them, and do not 
overwork them, which seldom happens, and there can be no 
doubt that the slave receives in his maintenance, in the pro- 
vision made for him in infancy, sickness, and old age, a rea- 
sonable compensation for his services, and more than the 
Northern laborer ever does or can receive for the same 
amount of labor, for the Northern laborer works nearly 
double the number of hours that the slave does, with far 
more intensity, and with fewer recreations. Your negroes 
when properly treated, are no doubt better off, and better 
paid for their labor, than they would be if emancipated, and 
therefore the masters have a right to their services, and to 
retain them in their present condition. No doubt there are 
instances in which the relation is abused, but this is another 
consideration, and to be disposed of on other principles, for 
the abuse of a thing does not deny the legitimacy of its use. 
Society is to be regarded as a whole, as a sort of living 
organism, in which there are many parts, distinguishable but 
not separable one from another. All the parts are necessary, 
all should be knit together in a livingunion, and move on in 
concert as a living and reasonable being. The head is not 
to be valued without the body, nor the body without the 
members: yet the body should have a head, and the head 
should be regarded as the more noble part. The aristocracy 
are not to be separated from the body of the nation, are not 
to be regarded as existing apart and for themslv e alone, 
but as existing for the nation, for the service of the people, 
and the common good of the whole. Nobility is not a per- 



15 

sonal right, it is a trust — a trust from God for the common 
good of the nation. "Let him that would be greatest among 
JOQ be your servant." When the nobihty forget this, — when 
they live only for themselves, regard their rank and privileges 
as their indefeasible property, and use their superiority oiily 
in reference to their own selfish ends, they lose their char- 
acter of generosi, forget their nobility, sink to mere churls, 
and instead of serving the nation are served by it, and in- 
stead of guiding and leading society for the common good 
become an intolerable burden upon the people which they 
will be sure to attempt to shake off. Such became the old 
French noblesse under the reign of Louis the XV, the new 
nobility under the Emperor, the Qrleanist noblesse, under 
"tlie citizen king," and hence the revolutions of 1789, 1814, 
1830, and 184-8, which have threatened the very existence of 
European society, and which though checked for the mo- 
ment by the coup d'etat of December, 1851, are not yet 
concluded. Such are rapidly becoming our own American 
nobility, or aristocracy. Our gentlemen are bankers, sharp- 
ers, brokers, stock-jobbers, traders, speculators, attornies, 
pettifoggers, and in general worshippers of mammon. They 
have sometimes the manners, uniformly the sentiments, pas- 
sions, and churlishness of the lowest of the people, and use 
the people instead of serving them. Hence the alarm which 
wise men feel for the safety of our republic, and the real 
prosperity of our people. 

I am well aware that the dominant doctrine of the day is 
the contrary of the one, which, relying on the wisdom of 
antiquity and the experience ot all ages and nations, I ven- 
ture to re-assert The prevalent doctrine of the day is that 
all good ascends from below, and that every thing is to be 
condemned that does not operate from low to high. The 
higher classes instead of guiding and directing the lower, 
mur^t consent to be guided and directed by them ; the flock 
must chose and commission the pastor ; the ignorant must 



16 

teach the learned; the inept instruct the experienced; the 
subject give the law to the sovereign ; and the church must 
follow the instinct of the masses, be fed and governed by 
the people, instead of feeding and governing them according 
to the ordination of God. This is the grand heresy of our 
age. It floats in our atmosphere as a fatal miasma, and we 
inhale it with every breath. It is the Welt-Geist which even 
men who pass for philosophers bid us worship as the true 
and ever-living God, and which inspires all the revolutionary 
movements of our times. -But be assured that it is itself 
from below, not from above, and is as false and as destruc- 
tive as every thing else that rises to us with smoke from the 
bottomless pit. Every good and perfect gift is from above, 
and Cometh down to us from the father of lights, with whom 
there is no variableness or shadow of turning. The whole 
order of Providence is that the higher should guide and 
govern the lower, and that whatever is wise and good cometh 
from above, and operates from high to low, never as the age 
presumptuously teaches from low to high. 

I quarrel not with forms of government; I find no fault 
with the political institutions of our country, or the form of 
civil policy our fathers have bequeathed us It is not of our 
republican institutions, nor of the popular power in their ad- 
ministration, that a Wiseman will complain, but the false and 
dangerous doctrines, according to which these institutions 
are interpreted, and with which it is become the fashion to 
identify them. I accept and defend all the democracy that 
was incorporated into the American institutions by their 
original framers, but I do not accept, and I should blush to 
defend, the vague and destructive democracy which we have 
borrowed from European radicals, and which has turned 
the heads of so large a portion of our people. I am, — as 
the members of the old Jeffersonian party in my boyhood 
were accustomed to say, — " a republican, but I am not a 
democrat," and he who is a democrat in the modern Euro- 



17 

pean sense, and the sense now generally adopted, here as 
elsewhere, is no loyal American citizen; for democracy as 
now generally understood both at home and abroad means 
either the unrestricted right of the majority to rule, which is 
social despotism, or the unrestricted liberty of the individual 
to do what he pleases, which is anarchy. No institutions 
more than ours demand the sanctity of law^ and none more 
imperiously demand the existence and influence of a noble 
or superior class — a real nobility, titled or untitled. It is 
not necessary that our nobility should be titled, for the title 
no more makes the noble than the habit makes the monk ; 
nor is it necessary that they should be recognized by the law, 
and have a civil constitution as in England ; but it is neces- 
sary that they exist, and thtit they have the direction of af- 
fairs. The larger the sphere we give in our institutions to 
the great body of the people, the more necessary are the 
wisdom, the virtue, the chivalry, the personal worth and au- 
thority of their natural chiefs to preserve the constitution, 
and to secure the wise and salutary administration of gov- 
ernment. 

The great mistake of our politicians of all parties, and 
perhaps of one party no more than of another, is in suppos- 
ing that the criterion of truth and virtue is popular sentiment, 
that the people are competent to teach and direct their nat- 
ural chiefs, and that they who are in office are not to ascer- 
tain and do what seems to them just and proper according 
to their own reason and conscience, but simply to ascertain 
and give effect to the wishes of the people, or rather, of the 
party which has placed them in power. Hence the highest 
officer in the state, nay, in the nation, becomes but the mere 
tool of his party, and is held to be as irresponsible, save to 
his party, as the trowel or the spade in the hands of the 
workman; even our best men are inclined to echo the sen- 
timent and pander to the prejudices of the mob. They who 
should be our gentlemen, our noblemen, maintain no person- 



18 

al independence, and cease to speak and act as freemen. 
They lack the courage, the virtue, to stand up as bold and 
chivalrous knights in defence of truth and justice. They 
lose the nice sense of honor, the invincible courage, th6 man- 
liness of character, and the true nobility of feeling, which 
constitute the freeman or make the nobleman, and become 
sly and subtle, cunning and artful, seeking not to govern the 
people, but to use them, and to accomplish their own selfish 
ends by flattery, cajolery, and intrigue. They stoop to con- 
quer, consent to be slaves of the base passions of the mob 
thai they may be its masters. Hence the baseness and ve- 
nality of our public men, and our lack, as a people, of the 
noble virtue of loyalty, in the sense of the French loijmite, 
and our contempt for the rights of our neighbors, which if 
not corrected must ultimately place us out of the pale of civ- 
ilized nations. 

No doubt others, as well as I, see whither our republic is 
tending, and feel the necessity of a remedy; but following 
out the false doctrine borrowed from the old French Jaco- 
bins, the greater part of them seek the remedy in popular 
education, or in the extension and support of common 
schools. Far be it from me to speak lightly of common 
schools, but I do not believe that any education can entirely 
remedy the evil. The age is as mad in its worship of edu- 
cation, as it is in its worship of radical or socialistic democ- 
racy. Education at best is far from being omnipotent, and 
no possible training of youth will infallibly make them what 
the wants of a free state demand. There is no subject on 
which there is more disgusting cant vented in our days than 
this very subject of education, and I fear something worse 
than cant. It is far easier to educate for evil than for good, 
for children since the Fall take to evil as naturally as ducks 
take tD water. The enemies of religion and society under- 
stand this perfectly well, and hence whenever in their power 
they seize upon the schools, and seek to control the education 



19 

of the young. To accomplish Iheir purposes, they have only 
to exclude religion from the schools, under the plea of ex- 
cluding sectarianism, and instead of teaching religion, teach 
as Frances Wright was accustomed to say, know-kdge, and 
they may soon have a community whose thoughts and affec- 
tions will be exclusively of the earth earthy. 

It is not without design that I have mentioned the name 
of Francis Wright, the favorite pupil of Jeremy Bentham, 
and famous infidel lecturer through our country, some twenty 
years ago ; for I happen to know, what may not be known 
to you all, that she and her friends were the great movers in 
the scheme of godless education, now the fashion in our coun- 
try. I knew this remarkable woman well, and it was my 
shame to share, for a time, many of her views, for which I 
ask pardon of God and of my countrymen. I was for a brief 
time in her confidence, and one of those selected to carry 
into execution her plans. The great object was to get rid 
of Christianity, and to convert our Churches into Halls of 
science. The plan was not to make open attacks on reli- 
gion, although we might belabor the clergy and bring them 
into contempt where we could ; but to establish a system of 
state, we said, -national schools, from which all religion was 
to be excluded, in which nothing was to be taught but such 
knowledge as is verifiable by the senses, and to which all 
parents were to be compelled by law to send their children. 
Our complete plan was to take the children from their pa- 
rents at the age of twelve or eighteen months, and to have 
them nursed, fed, clothed and trained in these schools at the 
public expense; but at any rate, we were to have godless 
schools for all the children of the country, to which the pa- 
rents would be compelled by law to send them. The first 
thing to be done was to get this system of schools estab- 
lished. For this purpose, a secret society w^as formed, and 
the ivhole country was to be organized somewhat on the plan 
of the Carbonari of Italy, or as were the revolutionists 



20 

throughout Europe by Bazard preparatory to the revolutions 
of 1820 and 1830. This organization was commenced in 
1829, in the city of New York, and to my own knowledge 
was effected throughout a considerable part of New York 
State. How far it was extended in other States, or whether 
it is still kept up I know not, for I abandoned it in the latter 
part of the year 1830, and have since had no confidential re- 
lations with any engaged in it; but this much I can say, the 
plan has been successfully pursued, the views we put forth 
bave gained great popularity, and the whole action of the 
country on the subject has taken the direction we sought to 
give it. I have observed too that many who were associated 
with us and relied upon to carry out the plan, have taken 
the lead in what has been done on the subject. One of the 
principal movers of the scheme had no mean share in organ- 
izing the Smithsonian Institute, and is now, I believe, one of 
the representatives of our government at an Italian court. 
It would be worth inquiring, if there were any means of as- 
certaining, how large a share this secret infidel society, with 
its members all through the country unsuspected by the pub- 
lic, and unknown to each other, yet all known to a central 
committee, and moved by it, have had in giving the extraor- 
dinary impulse to godless education which all must have re- 
marked since 1830, an impulse which seems too strong for 
any human power now to resist. 

But though such an education as we are laboring to give 
American children in our common schools, is only fitted to 
make them infidels, libertines, sharpers and rogues, I do 
not believe even a thoroughly religious education given, in 
Catholic schools by Catholic teachers and professors, would 
wholly remedy the evil, because the practical part of our edu- 
cation is never received within the schoofroom, but at home, 
in the streets, in the saloons, from associates, and the general 
habits, manners, customs, and tone of the society in which 
children grow up ; and because not natural training but grace 



21 

alone can elevate our fallen nature to genuine virtue. The 
schoolhouse can never be a substitute for the church, the 
schoolmaster for the priest, or education for the sacra- 
ments. Nevertheless, education can do something, and it is 
the ordinary human mode by which we are to attempt to 
secure the virtue of a community. That is, a religious edu- 
cation, not merely instruction in simply human knowledge. 

But there is no greater mistake than that of placing our 
chief reliance on common schools, however well organized, 
and however religious, or of expecting our security from the 
education of the mass, as seems to be the general opinion of 
our countrymen. With a territory stretching from the At- 
lantic, and which will soon stretch, in all probability, from 
the Isthmus of Darien to the North Pole, we have not a sin- 
gle institution deserving the name of University ; and claim- 
ing to be a reading people, we stand in regard to public 
libraries, the lowest on the list of civilized nations. There 
is not a single branch of literature or science which demands 
erudition for its treatment, that can be treated by the Amer- 
ican scholar without going abroad to consult foreign libra- 
ries. No adequate provision is made for the higher class of 
liberal studies, for the higher branches of genuine scholar- 
ship. We have, indeed, a good military academy, a good 
naval school, perhaps, and some passable law schools; but 
in matters of political and civil administration, of statesman- 
ship and diplomacy, we have no system of training, and are 
compelled to rely on ineptness and inexperience. Yet we 
boast of being an enlightened people. Our whole land is, 
so to speak, covered over with common schools, filled with 
common school libraries composed of a few dozen wishy 
washy volumes each, and we seem to imagine that to read, 
write and cipher is all that is necessary to enlighten a peo- 
ple, and to make them wise and virtuous, competent to all 
the complicated affairs of civil and social life. 

I complain not that common schools are uni^versal, I com- 



22 

plain not that they do not teach more branches and turn out 
more thorough scholars. They already attempt too much, 
more than is requisite for the mass of a people, more than the 
great body of our children can study to any advantage. 
Common schools are well enough in their place_, though less 
important than our age would have us believe. They can 
impart as much instruction as tlie people, considering their 
ordinary duties and avocations in life, can acquire; but they 
cannot suffice for the wants of a nation. You can never 
make all the people scholars, give to all a liberal training — 
not, if you will, for lack of ability on their part, but for lack 
of opportunity, and for the necessary incompatibility between 
such training and the menial offices of life, which require the 
constant labor and application of the great majority of every 
community. These offices unfit one for liberal studies, and 
liberal studies unfit one for them. Give, if it were possible, 
to the whole community the education, the culture, the re- 
finement and elevated manners and tastes of the few, and 
without which a nation reniEiins uncivilized, the great busi- 
ness of life would come to a stand-still, and your nation would 
be like an army without privates, or a ship without comm.on 
sailors. On the other hand to reduce all education and all 
culture to the level of your common schools, is to have no 
officers, none qualified to take the command and fill the 
higher offices of civilized society. The Mexican war taught 
our democratic statesmen the value of West Point, and we 
shall not very soon see again ignorant civilians chosen in 
preference to trained soldiers, to command our troops. The 
great bulk of every community always has depended and 
always will depend on the leadership in all things of the few. 
Here, then, you see the significance of liberal studies, and 
their absolute necessity to every enlightened and well ordered 
state. Liberal studies are the studies of the few, they are 
the studies of freemen, that is, of gentlemen, and their office 
is to qualify them to be wise and prudent, just and noble, 



•23 

able guides and leaders, that is, the faithful and competent 
servants of the community. It is not because you have bet- 
ter blood than others, it is not that society exists for you, 
for you all nature blooms, and for you the people live 
and labor, that you are to pursue liberal studies, and acquire 
the knowledge, the tastes and accomplishments of gentlemen, 
but that you may exert a wise and salutary influence on the 
great body of the nation. You are for the nation, not the 
nation for you; you are to sustain it, not it you. Your lib- 
eral education is a trust which you hold from God for the 
people, and you are to use it, not for your own private ben- 
efit, but in their service ; not as a facile means of compelling 
them to serve you, but as the necessary means of serving 
them. 

In the view of the case I have presented, the important 
thing in every nation, above all in every popularly constituted 
state, is not as we have foolishly imagined, common school 
education, is not the education of the mass, but the education 
of the gentlemen. When, what we call the upper classes are 
properly trained — which by the by they are not, with us — 
when they have the principles, the virtues, the habits and the 
tastes proper to their order, your state will flourish. It is 
the few that lift the many, and the virtues of the aristocracy 
that secure the virtues of the people, on the principle I have 
all along contended for, that all good is from above, and 
operates from high to low, not as a wild and inept democ- 
racy will have it, from low to high. 

Do not suppose, gentlemen, that I am unav^^are that the 
doctrine I have set forth is directly opposed to the popular 
doctrine of our country, or that I need to be told that it may 
easily be misapprehended, and made the occasion of repre- 
senting me as opposed to the people, and in favor of despot- 
ism, monarchy, and a tilled aristocracy. I am well aware 
of all this, for I am not utterly without experience, and if I 
sought to win popularity, or to gain the applause of the mul- 
titude, I should have brought out a very different doctrine, 



24 

and proved my utter imwortliiness to be your orator on an 
occasion like this. I cannot boast of a long line of distin- 
guislied ancestors, I cannot boast of having received even a 
liberal education in any adequate sense of that word; but T 
can with honest pride boast that I am and always have been, 
according to the measure of my light and ability, a freeman. 
I glory in bending my knee to God and to God's minister, 
but I have never yet learned to bend it to the mob, or to 
surrender the freedom and independence of my own soul to 
the despotism of public opinion. I claim to be a man, an 
individual, with rights which I will die sooner than surren- 
der, and duties, which I dare not neglect. As far as I am 
able I labor to form a true and noble public opinion, not to 
obey public opinion whatever it may be. I ask not what the 
people will say, but what is just, what is true, what is neces- 
sary or useful to be said. 

Such, gentlemen, I conceive is the spirit of the true schol- 
ar of the gentleman, of the freeman, and such is the spirit 
with which I wish you to be animated. You arc, I take it 
for granted. Catholics, and as such you have been taught the 
truth from God himself, and know what you are to believe 
and to do, and have no need to learn it from popular opin- 
ion, from the Welt-Geist, or spirit of the age. You are in- 
structed from above; therefore you can safely labor to form 
the popular mind, without danger of misforming it, and in 
your several spheres prove yourselves safe guides and leaders 
of the people. Understand well that this is your mission, 
and dare discharge it, fearlessl}^, bravely, heroically, whether 
you have the multitude with you, or have, as most likely 
will be the case, the multitude against you. Be brave, cour- 
teous, chivalrous knights, in defence of truth and justice, so 
shall you be without fear and without reproach; so shall you 
serve your country, avert, it may be, the dangers which 
threaten it, gain a name, which "posterity will not willingly 
let die," and; what is infinitely better, everlasting life and 
eternal glory in Heaven. 



V 



is.'-v 



/- i 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





01 1 858 877 



